


On the Necessity of Nightmares

by StealthKaiju



Series: Reflections on Ice and Darkness [1]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Character Study, Dark, First Kiss, Jack isn't particularly nice, M/M, Tertiary character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 03:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17256452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StealthKaiju/pseuds/StealthKaiju
Summary: “Which is the true nightmare, the horrific dream that you have in your sleep or the dissatisfied reality that awaits you when you awake?” Justin AlcalaThe Bogeyman is defeated, and there should be no more bad dreams.Except the children are still having nightmares.Set a few years after the film.





	On the Necessity of Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> There are some darker themes referred to in this story, specifically the state of the world today, with an overt reference to a school shooting. This is not a fluffy, sweet piece, and while I haven't tried to be gratuitous, there is death in this story. Jack is more morally ambiguous than he is in the film.
> 
> Hopefully you'll still enjoy it.

_“What goes together better than cold and dark?”_

Something was wrong with the children’s dreams.

 

No matter what the Sandman did – whatever landscapes he created, whatever wonders he crafted, children still had troubled sleep.

 

Some dreamt of a rising tide, a wave of inky black that swallowed them up. Of people chasing them with knives. Of people wearing bombs. Others had dreams of fire and falling rubble. Of bullets and screaming.

 

He worked, spinning and weaving his dreamsand through the long hours before dawn, but he could not be everywhere at once. It was a constant struggle, his soft, sweet dreams being lost in the fears of the children.

 

Fears of the real world.

 

He called a meeting with the other Guardians, but it took a long time for them to understand what he was trying to say. He tried to not get frustrated, but he was exhausted.

 

‘The children are scared? But…but we got rid of the bogeyman!’ North cried, arms flailing. ‘What is creating this fear?’

 

‘He hasn’t escaped? He’s still trapped, isn’t he?’ Toothiana asked, her hands wringing.

 

‘He’d better be careful if he has, because I’m gonna…’ began Bunny.

 

‘It’s not Pitch.’ Jack said, his voice cold as a wintry chill. ‘It’s the children themselves.’

 

The other Guardians looked at him, disbelief in their eyes. ‘Nonsense!’ North scoffed. ‘Children do not want fear. They would not want to give themselves nightmares.’

 

Jack sighed, blue eyes downcast. ‘They’re not doing it deliberately. I think… I think it’s how they’re interpreting the things around them. What they read, what they watch, what the adults are saying above their heads. Except they’re not doing it very well.’

 

He thought of his own Jamie, and the day he had come home from school in an ambulance, shaking and silent. How some of his friends – children Jack had danced and played games with – had not come home at all.

 

The Sandman clapped his hands and nodded vigorously. Yes, that was what he was saying! The children were doing it themselves.

 

Now how were they going to stop them?

 

*

 

Pitch once again regained consciousness, and once again thought it a pointless exercise. He was still bound at his hands and feet, trapped against the corner with the nightmare on his chest. It was a squat ugly thing, a horrible cross between a monkey and an insect. Five red eyes watched him, a mouth of sharp pointed teeth within scant inches of his throat.

 

He closed his eyes and fell back into oblivion.

 

*

 

Jack travelled on the cold winds to Pitch’s lair, not even stopping to frost the trees or windowpanes of the towns he flew through. He had a purpose and had no time to delay. Moving the old bedframe aside, he dropped into the tunnels below.

 

A few errant nightmares snapped at his heels, tried to twist round his ankles, but several freezing sparks and they scuttled to the shadows. He walked on until he found Pitch slumped in the corner.

 

‘Pitch,’ he called out. He took in the form before him – once a proud and imposing figure, Pitch was now ragged and washed-out, a scarecrow without its straw-filling. Guilt and pity flooded through him, but he swallowed them both down. ‘Pitch,’ he repeated.

 

Dusk-grey eyes opened slowly, taking a while to focus. Eyebrows creased together. ‘Jack Frost? What are you doing here?’

 

Jack aimed his staff at Pitch’s chest, and Pitch did nothing except wait calmly for death. There was a blast of cold and a horrific shriek as the nightmare became encased in ice. It rolled off his chest and shattered onto the floor, pieces dissolving into puffs of grey smoke.

 

Pitch raised an eyebrow. ‘What are you-?’ Jack walked over to him, a small knife cutting the nightmares that were wrapped around his ankles and wrists. Ice-cold fingers rubbed where the bonds had cut into the skin, massaging some feeling back into them. Pitch knew he should move away – if he had any self-respect left, he should really attack Jack, wring his neck, choke the life out of him – but the feeling was pleasant. And he was so very tired.

 

‘Can you stand?’ Jack asked him, words velvet-soft. None of the arrogance or cheekiness that he had heard from him before. _What a weird dream I must be having_ , thought Pitch.  He looked into sapphire-blue eyes, seeing no animosity or anger. Just sadness.

 

‘Can you stand?’ Jack repeated, holding out his hand.

 

Pitch shook his head. ‘I don’t think I can.’

 

Jack sat down next to him, leaning his head against the wall. ‘We’ll just stay here for a while then, shall we?’

 

Pitch smiled showing his teeth. ‘Aren’t you afraid of me? What I’ll do to you?’

 

Jack looked into his eyes, his lips twisted in a smirk. ‘Pitch,’ he drawled, ‘I have never been afraid of you.’

 

Pitch could have strangled the little shit. Except he couldn’t really find the energy to do anything except close his eyes and fall asleep.

 

*

 

When Pitch awoke, he found himself lying on a pile of pillows on the floor by a fire. A glass of water and some apples had been placed within easy reach of his hands. He scanned the room, eyes adjusting to the light of the flickering flames. In the corner, away from the fire’s heat, Jack leaned on his staff.

 

‘He awakes,’ he murmured, a lilt to his words like the soft chirrup of a bird.

 

‘Did you call winds to carry me?’ Pitch asked.

 

‘I carried you.’ He snorted as Pitch raised a disdainful eyebrow. ‘What, I’m stronger than I look!’

 

Pitch hummed. ‘You look like a boy. Except, you’re not really, are you?’

 

Jack smiled but it was cold and sharp. ‘I haven’t been a boy for three hundred years, Pitch. ‘

 

Pitch drew himself into a sitting position, muscles twinging. ‘I have a feeling that the others forget that.’ He crossed his arms. ‘Why are you here?’

 

Jack moved the staff between his hands in quick, jerky movements. Fidgeting. Anxious perhaps? ‘We have a proposition for you.’

 

‘We? You mean, you and the other Guardians?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

Pitch cackled. ‘How hilarious.’

 

Jack waited as Pitch stopped laughing, a frown over his porcelain features. ‘You can’t be serious.’

 

‘Of course we are. We want your help.’

 

Pitch’s anger flowed through him like burning oil. ‘You want my help?!’ he said quietly. ‘You expect me – humiliated, defeated, ignored – to help you?’

 

Jack held his gaze. ‘Wouldn’t ask if we didn’t Pitch.’

 

‘I won’t ever help you, or any of them!’ Pitch snarled.

 

Jack shrugged his shoulders then clicked his fingers. Instantly the fire went out and the room turned cold, so cold Pitch could see his breath. He was left in darkness, the only sounds the light footsteps of Jack as he walked away.

 

‘You’ll help or you’ll rot, Pitch. Your choice.’

 

*

 

It was an hour before dawn, and the deep snow muffled sounds. Pitch and Jack walked slowly side by side, neither of them leaving footprints.

 

‘So, you want me to make nightmares? Of made-up monsters, silly, unreal things?’ Pitch asked.

 

Jack nodded. ‘Things that can’t exist. That won’t hurt them when they’re awake.’

 

Pitch tilted his head in contemplation. ‘And I would get to keep the fear for myself?’

 

‘And you would be believed in. Everyone knows the bogeyman brings bad dreams.’ Jack grinned. ‘Pretty sweet deal.’

 

Pitch smiled despite himself. ‘I realise why they sent you. You and I are similar.’

 

Jack stopped to look up at him. ‘Why do you think that?’

 

‘We both know loneliness. Also, you’re just not as cute and fluffy as the other Guardians.’

 

Jack laughed. ‘I don’t know, North has a certain cruelty about him. He only gives presents to good little children.’

 

‘Not having presents is not the same thing as punishment Frost.’

 

Jack bit his lip. ‘Really?  Seeing something other people have that you don’t? Isn’t desire dangerous? It achieves nothing, a cancer which slowly feeds off its host.’ His voice dropped. ‘Haven’t you ever wanted something, Pitch?’ The spirit laid a cold hand on Pitch’s arm, though it spread a flush of heat through Pitch’s skin. ‘Wanted something which you shouldn’t have?’

 

Pitch cleared his throat. ‘You do not think I would try to take control again?’

 

Jack laughed. ‘I don’t think you’re that stupid.’ He walked up to Pitch, floating so he was at eye-level. There was barely a hand span between them. ‘I am not afraid of you, Mister Bogeyman,’ Jack purred. He leaned to whisper, a cold breeze over the flesh of Pitch’s ear. ‘And I am far more dangerous.’

 

*

 

Cold kills. Jack knows this.

 

Once, many years ago, he killed deliberately. The man deserved it – he beat his wife and children. Jack had watched as the man had fallen asleep, drunk on a bench, and he had made the wind blow colder and the snow fall.

 

He had waited as the man’s skin paled. As his heart rate jumped and his breathing quickened.

 

By this point the man had awoken, but his movements had been sluggish and graceless, his words slurred. His fingers and his lips were blue, and he lost control of his bladder, soiling himself.

 

Jack had let the winds blow.

 

The man shivered, whole body twitching like a fish on a hook. Blank eyes rolled around, until they seemed to spot Jack.

 

‘Help me… please, help’ he managed to choke out, before his head slumped in lost consciousness.

 

Within a few moments he was dead.

 

*

 

Pitch and Jack stood by the little girl’s bed. ‘Are you really going to watch as I do this?’ asked Pitch.

 

‘Performance anxiety?’

 

‘This is a skilled craft, I need to concentrate.’

 

‘I’ll be quiet as a church mouse,’ Jack said, eyes smiling. ‘Still going to watch though.’

 

Pitch glared at him but it had no effect. He rolled his shoulders and started to work.

 

First he carefully drew out the girl’s fear from her psyche, delicately and carefully, like removing a morsel from a spider’s web without damaging either. He then took the fear (‘being too fat – she’s not even six, why is she even thinking of that?’) and moulded it, turning it to something else more palatable: a three headed pig that kept trying to eat her.

 

Jack remained silent as Pitch worked, fascinated by the threads of shadows and crystal images.

 

Pitch stepped back from his work. Already he looked fuller, more composed, a small smile on his lips. ’Not my best work, but I’ve been out of the game for a while…’

 

‘You’ll do fine, Pitch,’ Jack said, floating so he was eye-level with him again. ‘Time to move-on, clear the way before Sandy gets here.’

 

Pitch crossed his arms petulantly. ‘Am I to understand that you’re my chaperone now? Here to keep me out of trouble?’

 

Jack slowly moved his hand onto Pitch’s shoulder, sliding his fingers onto the other’s neck. Pitch stood stock still, heart in his mouth, as Jack’s fingers ran through his hair.

 

‘Not all kinds of trouble,’ he whispered, before placing his lips against Pitch’s own.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> Jack is very different to how he is presented in the film. Yet, rewatching it recently, there is already disconnect between a teenage boy given a grown man's voice (Chris Pine), and Jack has been on his own for three hundred years. Bound to send you a little mad.


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